Scars
by swaps55
Summary: "The universe as she had known it began and ended with the same four gray walls and a window that looked down on a world loath to her existence." Stand alone work focused on Jack around the time of her ME2 loyalty mission. For Ironman088.


**Scars**

_For Ironman088_

The universe as she had known it began and ended with the same four gray walls and a window that looked down on a world loath to her existence.

When she'd left them behind, she had no compass. No roadmap. No well-tread paths formed in her subconscious to guide her steps, no mentor to teach her who she was or where she'd come from, no way to forge her own identity, because she had no history and the future didn't look bright. So she'd started fresh, designing the narrative of her own existence with the only canvas she had available to her: her own skin.

She had been born ugly and despised, but she had cradled that pain and turned it into something beautiful.

There wasn't an inch of her that she wasn't willing to canvas, each tattoo painstakingly designed and engraved so that her flesh became a living tapestry of every fear, every triumph, every hard learned lesson. It was far greater armor than anything she could wear, and ensured she would never forget her quest to learn where she had come from and who had made her this way.

Because in the end, no matter how far she roamed, no matter who she killed, no matter how much destruction she left in her wake, it all came back to those four gray walls and the pathetic existence she had led within them.

Within those four gray walls were a bed with a threadbare sheet and table she'd named Robert, because at first she liked to imagine somewhere she had a father with that name. But it did not take her long to realize there was no Robert. She had no father. No mother. She had been spawned by pain and anger, raised by four gray walls and a wretched desk that she now hated for giving her the idea.

And then there was the window. It looked down onto an open world, teeming with kids that were just like her, only they ate together. Walked together. Talked. Every now and then, she saw them laugh. There was a whole world of them, shepherded by the same handlers who wrestled her to the ground, dragged her from her room, strapped her in chairs and pierced her skin with cold needles, then threw her back through the door to her cell – the one painted with a Cerberus insignia.

But the window tormented her more than the actual torture. She tried banging on the glass, screaming for attention until her knuckles were bloodied and her throat on fire. But she was painfully, willfully ignored, condemned to invisibility and exile for the simple crime of living. She vividly remembered the day she finally realized that the kids were not laughing with one another. They were laughing at her.

Soon she began to hate them as much as she hated Robert. And the hate made her good at the fights.

The first time they took her to the ring, she was so happy to see another kid that she cried, reached out to hug the complete stranger who faced her from the other side of the crude concrete barriers that fenced them in. The kid responded by punching her in the face, not just with a fist, but with a blast of energy that knocked her to the floor, her left cheek bellowing in pain where her jaw had fractured.

At first she was too stunned to fight back. She would be thrust into the ring, blinding lights in her face, confronted by kids with hate in their eyes who would attack her with a relentlessness and ruthless joy that she could not comprehend nor defend herself against.

Then she took her first swing. She remembered it with supreme, sharp clarity that was blessedly absent from most of the jumbled maze of her childhood memories. All of that pain, confusion and despair brewed into the purest form of anger, awakening something in her she had not previously known existed. The blue glow that enveloped her fingers, hand, wrist, all the way up her arm produced a warm buzz that filled her with a cold, remorseless light. The force of the blow was so powerful she had snapped the kid's neck, and to this day she neither remembered his face nor felt one shred of regret over his brutal passing at her hands. There was only a rush of something she couldn't even define at first, because she'd never felt it before.

Joy.

She didn't care that she was immediately thrown to the ground by the handlers with her face ground into the dirt and shit of the arena floor, restrained and forcibly hauled back to her cell. She screamed the whole time, but this time it was not from terror but ecstasy. She had purpose, and she never forgot it.

That day her destiny became her own, the torment they had rained down on her for a lifetime now a source of power that became greater than they could control. When she made her escape she had discovered an entire universe outside of that grimy window, and even that wasn't large enough to hold her. The first thing she had done was to mark herself with the tattoo of a bloody teardrop emblazoned across a rising red sun.

Turns out, if you mess with someone's head enough, you could turn a scared little kid into an all-powerful bitch.

She left the cell behind her, but the stench and memory of it lingered, tightening over the years rather than fading. She allied herself with pirates. Mercenaries. Cults. In her desperate search to find herself she gave herself to anyone and everyone who would have her, until they used her, betrayed her, and cast her aside. Each left a new mark on her skin, all woven diligently into the tapestry of Jack in an effort to break the shackles that held her even as she wandered free to do as she pleased.

Because in the end, no matter how much she hated Subject Zero, the girl she had been, she was held hostage by her and the memory of those four gray walls.

Now as she sat in the darkened hold of a Cerberus ship, she was staring at the schematics of the place that had dogged her ever since she left it, and for the first time, it had a name.

Teltin.

A facility built by Cerberus hands on Pragia to study and enhance biotic potential.

Her mind filled with haze and the memory of those four gray walls. She flexed a fist, a blue glow springing to life around it. Study and enhance. Those motherfucking Cerberus _bastards_.

She hurled the datapad as she leapt off her cot, bellowing with sudden rage. The only thing available to take the brunt of her wrath was the cot or the hull of the ship. She chose the cot, mangling it with her bare hands and not her biotics. This kind of raw fury was better served by the exertion, and if she turned her biotics on the ship the motherfucking AI would send Shepard to calm her down. And she did not want to calm down. Her blood ran hot with fury, and the narcotic effect on her brain was the best she had felt since coming out of cryo.

She was the girl in the ring once more, coming to life at the sound of snapping bone.

Picking up the cracked datapad, she stared at the now distorted image it displayed. Through her anger a gruesome smile twisted her lips, and she began to laugh.

Now that she knew where it was, she wanted to go there. Wanted to see it with her adult eyes, and watch it burn.

Jack had learned a lot about the _Normandy_ since her arrival. Shepard and his little Cerberus sexpot might have tossed her down here and assumed she would be so thankful for the rescue she would just sit quietly until needed, but that was their mistake to make.

Stealing the shuttle would be difficult, even for her. Getting into it without being caught would be one thing, but getting it off the ship without the damned AI alerting everyone would probably be near impossible. And even if she could, the _Normandy_ would be able to overtake her before she got far. Shepard might be a Cerberus pawn, but even she had to admit he wasn't the pushover she had initially taken him for.

So if the shuttle was out, there was only one other option.

Take the ship.

The only thing standing between her and control of the _Normandy_ was an AI. This was, admittedly a problem. But smart as it might be, an AI was still a machine, and machines had off switches. If she could deactivate it and get control, the crew could either submit or she could vent the oxygen and see how cooperative they were without air. And if Shepard wanted to think she wouldn't go through with it, that deep down she was good, decent and just misunderstood, then maybe a little shortness of breath would show him how wrong he was.

Maybe if he had spent a little time trapped within those four gray walls, he would know better. But he hadn't. She had. And now here she was, the brutal but intricate webs of her life mapped across her body in lines of ink, finally in possession of the horrible genesis that had spun them.

She just needed to access the AI Core undetected.

Jack had escaped more prisons than Shepard and his flunkies could imagine, and they had left her down here with access to the ducts.

* * *

"Stop right there, Jack."

The room flooded with light at the opening of the door, and Jack froze with her hands poised over the console. She squinted at the sudden brightness, seeing the silhouette of Shepard and two others framed in the door. The Cerberus bitch and her peon. All three were armed.

So close. She felt warmth bubbling up from within, felt the tingle in her fingers. If they wanted a fight, she would give them one.

"Back away from the console," Lawson ordered, the very sound of her voice snapping Jack's already thin nerves.

"I don't take orders from Cerberus you child torturing _bitch!" _Jack screamed, summing a biotic shockwave into her hands with the full intention of sending that condescending face through the hull and into the vacuum of space.

"Stop!" Shepard shouted, in such a commanding tone that for a moment Jack actually lowered her hands.

Shepard did not let the opportunity pass him by.

"Miranda, Jacob. That'll be all." He holstered his sidearm, much to everyone's surprise, including Jack's.

"Sir," Lawson protested.

"Do it. _Now."_

Jack could not help the flush of pleasure at the incensed look on that perfect face. She did not let go of her biotics until both of the Cerberus drones had left. Shepard sealed the door behind them, leaving just the two of them in the AI Core.

"_Shepard, I am not sure this is wise."_

Make that three.

"It's all right, Edi," Shepard replied, without taking his gaze off of Jack. "Jack is going to tell me what's going on, and I'm going to listen. There's not going to be a problem. Right?"

Jack gave him a withering look. "You assume too much Shepard. I can rip this ship apart with my bare hands and you know it."

"Not without killing yourself, and I don't think you want to die."

"Try me," she challenged.

"I did," he replied. "Back on Purgatory. You could have stayed and gone down with the ship. But instead you came with me. So like it or not, apparently you do have something to live for, even if you don't know what it is." He crossed his arms and leaned against the door, much to her irritation. "But I'm going to guess you might have figured that out. So why don't you tell me."

She scoffed. "You're not my friend, Shepard, so stop acting like it."

"I'm also not your enemy, Jack."

"Bullshit. You can say what you want about your allegiances. But you're still in command of a Cerberus ship with a Ceberus crew. So fuck you and fuck this crew. I know who you really are. Now I have proof, and I'm going to do something about it."

"Not with my ship."

"Fine. Give me a shuttle."

"Or you'll take one?"

"Yes."

They stared at each other for several long moments, neither willing to cave. She was a little surprised when Shepard finally did.

"I fought Cerberus on my old ship with a team of some of the best soldiers of any species in the galaxy. They're still around. What makes you think you'll do better?"

She laughed. He was so damn idealistic she could hardly stand it. "I have no intention of wiping Cerberus out, even though the assholes deserve to be scrubbed from the galaxy."

"Then what do you want?"

She began to pace, realizing only when it was too late that she was betraying her own anxiety. "Revenge. Closure." She threw her arms up in exasperation. "Fuck if I know. I just know where I need to go."

"And where is that?"

She halted and glared at him. "Why do you care?"

"I need to trust my crew," he replied. "And they need to trust me. If not, they're a liability. What we're up against is too great for me to worry about liabilities."

"If you're telling me you trust the Illusive Man, you're a lot dumber than I took you for, and I set my standards pretty low."

There was a momentary flash in Shepard's eye that showed her she'd at least stung a nerve.

"The Illusive Man isn't part of my crew," he replied somewhat stiffly.

"And what about your genetically engineered cheerleader?"

"Ms. _Lawson_ may be with Cerberus, but she believes in what we're doing. I trust her to get the job done we came to do."

Jack crossed her arms. "Trust gets you killed, Shepard. I should know."

"You don't know anything."

The coldness in his reply took her off guard, and this time there was no flash in his eyes or change in his expression to guide her.

"We can do this all day, Jack," he said. "But I don't have time. Tell me what you found, or I'll drop you off at our next stop and you can find your own shuttle to get wherever you're trying to go."

She hesitated. He knew as well as she did what that meant. Cerberus may have buried her escape from Purgatory, but the moment she was out of pocket she had no doubt they'd announce it to the goddamned galaxy and she was as good as fucked. Not to mention she was trapped in a room with an AI that probably had a dozen different ways to kill her, shackles or no.

"Pragia," she said finally.

He raised his eyebrow in a question.

"Ceberus had a facility there. I'm going to blow it up."

Realization came over him. "You found where they held you."

"Yes," she spat, incensed by his sudden sympathy. "I found out where Cerberus held me captive and tortured my brains out until I was old enough to bust my way out by murdering everyone in my path. Now I'm going to blow. It. Up."

"I can't let you blow up a facility full of people. But I can help you bring them to justice."

"Fuck you and your justice. There is no justice for what they did."

He started to speak but she held up a hand. "Don't get your pious panties in a wad. I said Cerberus _had_ a facility. The records I found in their database indicate they abandoned it not long after I remodeled the place."

"You're welcome," Shepard said.

She rolled her eyes. If he thought he was getting a thank you for providing the records, he was going to get bored.

"So you wanted to steal the _Normandy_ to get to an abandoned Cerberus facility just so you could nuke it." There was a trace of a smile on his face that almost convinced her to queue the shockwave once more.

"You have no idea what they put me through. What it's like to have the same shit following you around every waking minute of your goddamned life. You think just because you're some primadonna Alliance soldier who's seen some action that you know something about me? Fuck!" She resumed her pacing, failing to notice that hard look come over his face again until he spoke.

"I'll take you to Pragia, Jack. Maybe we'll both learn something."

* * *

To her surprise he was true to his word. Within days the _Normandy_ arrived in orbit around Pragia, and Shepard had the shuttle readied to go down to the surface. It should have made her feel powerful. Instead she only felt small. The anger that had fueled her confidence had subdued into doubt, and she felt more like a child throwing a tantrum than someone seeking to set her demons on fire.

Down on that planet was the place that had bred and raised a monster. Did she really want to go back into its den?

"There's a complication," Shepard told her as she boarded the shuttle.

She raised an eyebrow.

"There's a shuttle down on the surface, and some residual power readings that indicate the place isn't empty."

Her stomach flip flopped. Shepard handed her a pistol. "In case we need it," he informed her.

A cold rain greeted them when they exited the shuttle onto the rooftop of Teltin, chattering angrily as it ricocheted off the metal. It was dark and silent, and Jack had to pull up short to avoid falling through a hole where part of the roof had collapsed. If there was someone else here, they hadn't done much to improve the place. Beyond the roof she could see the dense, brooding vegetation of Pragia closing in, waiting for its chance to overwhelm and take back what belonged to it. There was a malaise here that seeped up from the soil and hung in the air, like something borne out of the very bones of the planet itself.

She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chill. Nothing around her looked or smelled familiar, but a sick feeling of dread that she hadn't felt since she was a child settled firmly into her stomach.

It _felt_ familiar.

"Jack," Shepard called. She looked over to see him standing by a staircase that led down into the facility, watching her with that shrewd look that made her feel skinless. "Let's go."

She dropped her arms and straightened up. "Yeah. Right."

Shepard stood by so she could lead the way down. She gave a sideways glance to the quarian and turian standing beside him. Goddamn Shepard and his goddamn flunkies. He never went anywhere without those two, and when Jack had tried to object he'd shot her down with the force of a steel trap snapping closed. It was the first real glimpse Jack had gotten of the iron man beneath the Cerberus suit. She didn't care for it.

Sharing this experience with Shepard was bad enough, but now Tali and Garrus were along for the ride thanks to the goddamned shuttle they'd detected on the surface. Their nobleness and fucking pity were more than she thought she could stand. She was who she was, and didn't need anyone feeling fucking sorry for her.

_He trusts them_, a voice in the back of her head whispered. She swatted it away. He could trust whoever the hell he wanted.

Entering Teltin was like entering a tomb. It was damp, silent save for the eerie drip of water echoing the empty hallways. Thanks to the aggressive vegetation the roof was the only way in or out. _No doors….no windows…._it has been a prison in every sense, whether you were in a cell or not.

It was dark, lit at first only by the flicker of their flashlights, which threw haphazard shadows about their feet. The room was rectangular but largely empty save for a row of containers lying carelessly against the far wall.

"Where are we?" Shepard asked, shattering the silence and causing her to jump.

"I don't know," she admitted, her mind racing. She replayed the moments of her escape – the ones she could remember – over and over trying to get her bearings. "I don't remember being here. But if you want a guess it looks like a processing room where they brought in new kids." She pointed to the containers.

"What," Garrus said. "You think they shipped a bunch of kids here inside those containers?"

"Yup," she said, walking past without a second glance.

"Were they alive?" Tali asked, sounding like she wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

"Usually," Jack replied before rounding the corner to the next room. There was an active communications console there. "Someone's used this console," she observed, approaching it almost uncertainly. Security footage of a man in a Cerberus scientist uniform and a security guard was paused, awaiting playback. She pressed play.

"_The Illusive Man is requesting operations logs again. He's getting suspicious." _

"_Fine. We'll doctor something up for him."_

"_He'll see through it. He knows we're stalling." _

"_Once he gets results he won't care about the means."_

"_But if he finds out…"_

"_He won't." _

They all stared in silence as she cut the feed.

"Sounds like this place went rogue," Shepard said.

Jack turned to face him. "You think that once the Illusive Man got what he wanted he'd give a shit?"

Shepard didn't answer.

"That's what I thought."

"What did he want?" Tali asked.

"Enhancing biotic powers in humans," she replied.

"How?"

Jack shrugged. "Fuck if I know. Anything they could think of that might make the biotics more potent. Drugs. Torture. Whatever got their rocks off." She flexed her wrist as a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "It worked."

"Why would torture make you a better biotic?" Tali asked.

"I didn't exactly stop to ask questions on the way out," she retorted. "Come on. I want to plant this bomb in my cell. Let's get there so we can get out."

They followed her without further argument.

Teltin was an abandoned maze, one she was forced to navigate based on fragments of terrified, adrenaline fueled memories. But those memories sparked with anger and vibrant color and sound. Here in the present everything was the same damp, dark gray, haunted by half-heard whispers gnawing at her brain. Unconsciously she rubbed the biotic amp nestled against her ear. Her HUD was still empty, save for the hardsuit signatures of her unwanted companions, but she couldn't shake the feeling that around every corner there was someone waiting to pounce and put her back in shackles. The others weren't immune to it either. Jack could sense Tali cringing in her suit, and the stick Garrus normally carried up his ass was jammed up there even tighter than usual. Shepard walked with a tight, stoic expression, hand never far from his pistol.

Finally, when they rounded a corner her heart sped up. _I know this place_, she thought to herself. _I know it well._ Her eyes locked on the remnants of cement barriers. _I lived in my cell_, she thought. _But I was born here. _She ran her fingers over the teardrop tattoo high on her shoulder.

Shepard followed her gaze and walked over, placing one hand on one of the barriers. "This looks like an arena."

"The fights," she murmured, feeling tingling that made her fingers itch. Idly she rubbed a finger against her thumb.

"Did anyone die?" Shepard asked, meeting her gaze with unsettling shrewdness. He knew what had happened there without having to ask. She avoided his eyes, but lost none of her pride. "I was shocked when I hesitated," she replied. "Flooded with narcotics when I attacked."

"That's sick," Garrus said.

She grinned. "I still get warm feelings during a fight."

Shepard dropped his gaze, and she smirked. The poor bastard was out to save the galaxy, but she wondered if he'd ever really considered that some of the people he wanted to save were people like her.

She led them to another corridor and down a flight of steps, but came to a halt a few from the bottom at the sight of two varren corpses. She approached one cautiously, toeing it with her foot.

"Fresh," she said. She'd almost forgotten about the intruders Shepard had detected from orbit.

They all eyed the carcasses, then turned their gaze to the door at the bottom of the stairs. Varren meant krogan. Krogan were a problem. Shepard moved his hand from the pistol and reached for the assault rifle strapped to his back. Garrus sighed. "It's just never easy. Just once, it would be nice if it were easy."

"Fat chance, Vakarian," Shepard said, cracking the first smile Jack had seen since they landed.

They opened the door.

A crew of Bloodpack mercenaries looked up with mild interest from where they were lounging around a series of tables. Mess hall, Jack recognized. The place so filled with whispers and conspiratorial laughter. Her fists clenched. Almost unconsciously her mind sought out the gravitational forces in the room.

"What the hell is this?" one of them rumbled.

"Where is Wrex when you need him?" Garrus muttered.

Jack did not hear him, nor care about the krogan. She was staring up at the mirror on the upper level looking down on the cafeteria.

_It wasn't a window_, she realized with sickening feeling. _It was a one way mirror._

She was looking at her cell, her window on the only world she thought had existed. All the hours she had banged, screamed, begging for someone to look just look at her, acknowledge her existence. It had all been nothing more than an exercise in futility.

White hot fury burned the back of her retinas. She executed her mnemonic trigger without having to even think about it. The edges of her vision blurred as a bloom of dark energy flickered to life, dancing in her palm. These krogan did not belong here.

"This is my house," she heard herself say, voice rising with every syllable. "And I will kill you _all!" _She let out a roar and unleashed a shockwave of the same intensity she'd intended for Miranda Lawson. Before it had even hit she charged up again, her amp whining in protest, and as the shockwave sent the mercenaries flying she launched a biotic field that plucked the krogan leader out of the air and hurled him against the opposite wall. Then in one fluid motion she drew out her pistol and emptied a clip of warp rounds into what was left, detonating the latent biotic fields and causing explosions that hurt her ears.

Shepard, Tali and Garrus had all drawn their guns, but there was nothing left to fire at.

Jack holstered her pistol. "My cell is that way," she said pointing, striding off while trying to hide her exertion. Here, in this place, there was no weakness. Here she was a god, and she would be damned if they saw her as anything else.

Garrus and Shepard were staring at her, and she could sense Tali's shock even through her suit.

"You aren't curious as to why they were here?" Tali asked after an uncomfortable pause.

"Doesn't matter," she said flatly. "In a few minutes this place will be nothing more than ash."

They followed her up the next flight of stairs and to the door of the room that had for years been the only thing she'd known. She paused, clenching and unclenching her fists. Then with one angry thrust of her hand she unsealed the door.

The room was not empty. There was a man inside. A human. He turned slowly at the sound of the door, but if he was surprised at their presence he did not show it.

For a long moment they only stared at each other.

"You're breaking into my home," he said.

"_Your_ home?" she said with a harsh laugh. He only gazed at her. "Bullshit," she said, aiming her pistol at his head.

The man smiled. It was a sick smile, one that made her shudder.

"I know you, Subject Zero," he said softly.

She froze, her skin burning at the mention of that name.

"My name is Jack," she insisted. "Who the hell are you?"

"We all knew your face," he continued, still showing no concern for her gun. Instead he gazed around him, as if lost in a dream. "We all wondered about this room. Wondered what made you so special up here that the rest of us had to suffer so much on your behalf."

"Who are you?" she demanded again, starting to feel frantic. This was wrong. It was all wrong.

"To you I would have been Subject 89," he replied. "But my real name is Aresh. You were the question, Zero, and I came back to find the answer."

"Apparently you weren't the only one who had some issues to work out," Shepard murmured.

Jack glanced at him in anger, having almost forgotten he was even there. Aresh clearly didn't care about his presence.

"I came here with my mercs almost a year ago," he continued. "I wanted to see what was left. See what I could salvage."

Jack worked her jaw, unable to respond.

"The security cams saw your shuttle. I thought about warning the mercs, but when I saw it was you I wanted to see what you could do. See what all of our suffering had bought."

"Suffering?" Jack cried. "You think you suffered on my be_half_? Everyone in this place wanted to watch me fucking suffer."

He chuckled. "You think what they did to you was suffering? You poor, delusional little girl. Don't you see, Zero? You were the prize. The centerpiece of the entire project. We were the sacrificial lambs led to slaughter, so they could perfect their 'treatments' before trying them on you."

"No," she insisted. "They tried to kill me. You all tried to kill me! But I beat you. I beat all of you."

Now he looked amused, which only rattled her more. "So many of us died. And it was all for you. Everything that happened here was to make you a god. So we rioted together. Overpowered the guards. They were going to put us all down. But then you got loose. When I came to, everyone was dead. And you were gone. Yet now here we are…together again. In a way…I almost hoped you would come."

"Why are you here?" she demanded.

The smile fled his face to her relief, replaced with agitation. He began to pace. "It has to mean something. All of it had to mean _something._ I have to make it worth it. I want what they were after. What they gave you at the expense of me. I deserve what you have, and I'm going to get it. No matter what it takes. There are more kids out there. Kids like us. Once this place is up and running, I'll find them. Finish what Cerberus started."

"Fuck that," Jack said, another burst of blue-black dark energy bounding from her hands and knocking him to the floor. She pointed her pistol at his head.

"Jack, wait," Shepard said.

She relaxed her hand, but only slightly. Aresh sat quietly, as though this was exactly what he had expected, or even wanted.

"Are you fucking crazy?" she cried, glancing at Shepard for the first time. He, Tali and Garrus all has their guns trained on Aresh.

"This guy clearly is," Garrus said.

"Garrus, shut up," Shepard snapped. "Jack, you came here to move on from your past. Am I right? Kill him and you stay here, no matter how far you run. Look at him. Is that what you want to be?"

She looked. The dead expression in Aresh's eyes turned her stomach.

"We can get him help. Give him a chance. What he chooses to do with that is up to him, just like it's up to you."

Jack inhaled deeply, her mind racing.

"Fuck," she exhaled. "Goddamn it, Shepard!" She jerked the pistol away, then gestured to Tali and Garrus. "Fine. Get him the fuck out of here."

Shepard nodded, and each took Aresh by an arm to escort him out. Jack did not look behind her as he left. If she did she was sure she would change her mind and shoot him. What kind of sick fuck wanted to take the torture he had endured his entire childhood and inflict it on an innocent?

How close was she to being Aresh? What made her different? Or was she?

She shuddered.

When the door swished shut it was just her and Shepard. He loosened the straps to the bag with the bomb he had strapped to his back.

"Still want to go through with this?" he asked.

"Fuck yes."

"You did the right thing."

"I don't need your goddamned lectures, Shepard."

She looked around her, processing her cell for the first time since she'd set foot in here. The bed still had the threadbare sheet. Robert still sat in the corner. Overturned, but still Robert. She could see herself, the lost little girl, angry and crying. That anger and despair had never left her, and for the first time she felt shame rather than a desire vengeance. Aresh had revolted her, but she had been willing to space the crew of an entire ship to come to this sad, vacant ruin. Yet she judged him for wanting to sacrifice others – more kids – to this monstrous place.

_I am not this_, she thought to herself. _I am not the girl who lived in this room._

She stared at the desk for a moment, then walked over to it, lifted it with her biotics and hurled it through the mirror that had lied to her for so many years.

"Set the bomb," she said. "As soon as we get back to the shuttle I'm pulling the goddamned trigger."

The explosion rippled beneath them like a mini supernova. It was not the cleansing fire she had anticipated. Aresh sat across from her, restrained and sedated. Leaving in much the way he first came, she thought, not without irony. He whimpered at the sound of the explosion, but otherwise said nothing. When they returned to the _Normandy, _he was escorted out of her sight. She did not intend to ever see him again, and Shepard was smart enough to make sure she wouldn't before they'd dumped him wherever Shepard wanted to dump him.

She returned to the hold, where she sat in the darkness on a new cot. She hadn't asked for a new one; it had just shown up unannounced. She didn't see who had brought it and didn't ask.

The place that had plagued her every move had been eviscerated. She had clawed her way out of the vortex Cerberus had planted in her brain while Aresh drowned. This was the moment she was supposed to finally feel free.

She felt exactly the same.

What the _fuck._

Light from the stairwell cast a baleful glow in the hold, illuminating the lattice of ink on her pale skin. Everything she was she had been emblazoned for all to see, even if they could not hope to know what it meant. She traced the lines and shapes with the tips of her fingers. The badge numbers of guards who had stood in her way and been slaughtered. Symbols of the gangs she had joined looking for identity, and more bloodied teardrops for the kills that had won her feigned acceptance. The insignia of a cargo facility she had destroyed simply because she could, a quote from the dedication plaque of the ship she had stolen to do it.

The only mark she had refused to immortalize was Cerberus. She bore all of her scars on the surface for everyone to see save that one. The only one that ran too deep. So deep, that perhaps blowing Teltin had only scraped the skin raw. The infection still pulsed inside.

She shivered. _I am getting way too morbid_.

It was some time before she even noticed Shepard standing at the foot of the stairs, just out of reach of the shadows. She started just a little, recovered quickly.

"What," she said flatly.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Jack raised her eyebrow in amusement. "Why the hell would I want to talk about it with you?"

He shrugged. "I'm here. Why not?"

"What part of 'you're not my friend' don't you understand?"

"Not about friendship, Jack. It's about helping a fellow soldier in pain."

"I'm not one of your goddamn soldiers," she said. "And what would you know about my pain?"

Shepard fixed her with that uncanny look. She looked away, which made her even angrier. But then he spoke.

"Not everyone carries their scars on the outside."

When she looked up she saw he was examining her. Not like people usually did, removing what little she had on with their eyes so they could fantasize about what they could do with her. No, Shepard, she realized, was looking at her tattoos, and not with fascination, but keen understanding.

"You mark your outsides with all the pain you carry," he said, "hoping that will make it easier to carry on the inside."

She was silent.

"Some of us don't have that option," he went on. "We have to carry it inside no matter what, because if the people who depend on you could see it, they'd lose their faith. If that happens I can't do my job. And no matter what you might think, my job is important."

She considered him carefully. "Fine. You're a solider who's seen a lot of death. You're one of millions to walk a mile in those shoes. Doesn't change the fact that you grew up as a human being, probably with parents whose names you knew. You chose the life you live."

"My parents were tortured and killed by Batarians when I was a teenager," he replied as casually as if he'd just read her a maintenance report. "I was held down by two batarians who forced me to watch. Then they told me I could save them by submitting myself to the same thing. If I did they would let my parents go. If I didn't, they'd kill my parents but give me a running head start. I got to choose."

"And?" Jack asked.

"I ran."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You _ran?_"

He raised his shirt high enough to show her a nasty scar that crisscrossed his chest. "Not before they gave me this," he said. "But yes."

"I didn't know," she said.

"Of course not. No one does. It's not in my file. And like I told you, some of us have to keep our scars hidden."

"So why tell me?"

"I made a choice," he replied. "Time will tell if it was the right one."

She leaned back against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. "So, what, are you too much of a saint to want revenge? Is that what you came here to tell me?"

He shook his head. "At first I wanted to kill everything I saw. That's why I joined the Alliance. I was young. I was reckless." He gave her a meaningful glance. "Not unlike you. I was lucky to have someone take me under his wing."

"Let me guess. He saw the good inside you and tried to bring it out."

Shepard shrugged. "I like to think that sometimes. But in the end I think it's more likely I had enough potential that I was worth the effort. The upside of being a good soldier with an unstable psych profile was greater than the downside of moving on to the next guy. Next guy might have the right pysch profile, but the next guy wasn't me."

It wasn't a boast. And what amazed her was that in all likelihood it was the flat out truth.

"So what flipped the switch to turn you from killer to Alliance poster boy?" she asked.

"Elysium," he replied.

"You'll have to forgive me," she said, somewhat snidely. "I missed out on a lot of current events when I was in prison."

"Pirate bands, including batarians, attacked the colony of Elysium. I was there on leave. They took us completely by surprise. We didn't have the manpower or the resources to drive them off. We had to hold out until backup showed up."

"Let me guess. The great Commander Shepard rallied the troops and turned out to be a goddamned war hero."

"Yes."

She wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"I wasn't a commander then. But it's why I am now."

"So you did get your revenge. Kill a bunch of batarians, problem solved."

He shook his head. "I tried that. Got a friend killed. Then I realized that when you got down to it, batarians weren't the source of my pain. I was. I was the one who ran that day, and left my parents to die more painfully than I can imagine. So what was the solution? Stand my ground. Don't run. And I didn't. I never have again. Elysium's still standing, and so am I. Thanks to Cerberus."

Her anger flared back up. "Cerberus."

He gave her a long, hard look. "You really don't know anything about me, do you? Not about Saren or Sovereign. Not about what happened to me two years ago."

She rolled her eyes. "I get it. You're a hero. Saren worked with the reapers and you kicked his ass, so now they're working with the collectors. Which is why I'm here."

"And you really haven't figured out why I'm here with Cerberus and not the Alliance?"

"Sorry, Shepard. I didn't really care."

"It's because I died, Jack. The collectors destroyed the _Normandy_ and I got spaced."

That actually took her by surprise. "So what are you, Jesus fucking Christ?"

He actually laughed a little, but there was untapped agony in it that she was all too familiar with. "Hardly. Cerberus reconstructed me in a lab. That's why I'm here. They brought me back because colonies were vanishing, and they needed me. So there you go, Jack. I got my parents murdered. I got friends murdered. I've been raised from the dead. And I think I forgot to mention that I carry the memory of the reapers slaughtering an entire race thanks to the prothean beacon I ran into that started all this. You are not the only one living with pain, Jack. I just thought you should know."

He turned towards the stairs.

"Wait," she said, hating how desperate it sounded. Shepard stopped and looked back at her.

"Why did you tell me all of this?"

Shepard appeared to think for a moment. "Does it work?" he asked.

"Does what work?" she asked, confused.

"Carrying your scars on the outside, using them to frighten everyone off so they don't see what's really inside you."

She waited a long time to answer. Then, finally, "No."

He nodded. "That's why."

Jack watched him go, and sat for a long time in the shadows. Then, when the silence became more of a burden than a friend, she stood up, and went upstairs.


End file.
